Author: Harriet Cornell

Global Justice Academy Development Officer, Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow in History, University of Edinburgh

Why torture? Exploring our Perceptions of Torture, and What Causes It

Atrocities, Crime and Criminal Law, Global Justice Academy, Human rights, Police and Policing, Punishment, Students participate!, Torture

In this post, our Communications Intern, Jee-Young Song, reports from the second day of the recent GJA-sponsored GREYZONE summer school.

26 June 2018 was the second day of the GREYZONE Summer School, and starting the day’s session was Danielle Celemajer, Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Titled ‘The worlds that produce torture’, the main question put to us was:

“What causes torture?”

The straightforward answer to this would of course be obvious: doesn’t torture occur because a malignant perpetrator decided to inflict such an act on the victim?

However, this is an over-simplistic approach, as Professor Celemajer professed her view that there is in fact a complex map of causality for torture, with many contributory factors which extend beyond the scope of the individual perpetrator.

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Complicity, Elitism and Storytelling: Exploring Moral Ambiguity in Times of Injustice

Atrocities, Conflict, Crime and Criminal Law, Edinburgh, Global Justice Academy, Human rights, Knowledge Exchange, Theory, Understanding Global Justice

In her second post for this blog, GJA Communications Intern, Jee-Young Song, reflects on the recent GJA GREYZONE Summer School keynote session on ‘Conceptual Perspectives’.

The Summer School kick-started on Monday the 25 June, the theme this year being ‘Navigating the Grey Zone: Complicity, Resistance and Solidarity’.The following is from the ‘Conceptual Perspectives’ talks, where expert speakers from the fields of human rights, philosophy, and political theory (Ruth Kelly, Charlotte Knowles and Lukas Slothuus, pictured above) each gave their unique insight on the key issues.

Storytelling as a way to reinforce human rights

First to speak was Ruth Kelly, who focused on the potential for narrative to help communities articulate approaches to the development of human rights. To give an example of such artistic intervention, she showed footage taken at a poetry workshop in Uganda, where a woman recites a poem about struggling to choose between action and complicity, entitled ‘Should I stay? Should I go?’.

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Global Justice Academy Spring School: Using Critical Discourse Analysis in Community Settings

Edinburgh, education, Engagement, Global Justice Academy, Inequalities, Local-Global Connections, Students participate!, Theory, Understanding Global Justice

In April 2018, the GJA sponsored its first ‘Spring School’ in a collaboration with Moray House School of Education. In this post, Spring School Co-organiser and GJA Management Group member, Dr Callum McGregor, reflects on the Spring School’s innovative community-university partnership, which fostered strong links with local organisations and social justice practitioners. It is hoped that a similar Spring School will run again next year. Callum is also the programme director for the online MSc in Social Justice and Community Action, which is sponsored by the Global Justice Academy.

The Global Justice Academy (GJA) is an institutional forum for dialogue with practitioners engaged in justice issues locally and globally. This short blog highlights one such example of local dialogue, in the form of a series of community-university workshops on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA is a form of critical social research, whose purpose is to analyse the ways in which language can be used to both reproduce and challenge social injustice. Discourses can be thought of as representationsof various aspects of our social lives. These representations are made up sets of rules and statements that determine whatcan be expressed within a particular context, howit can be expressed, by whom and under what conditions. Discourses are important because they have real material effects on the distribution of burdens and benefits along different axes of inequality.

Between April and May 2018, three workshops were held, with the purpose of bringing together community practitioners, community-based adult learners, activists, students and academics to learn together about CDA. Specifically, the workshops focused on how CDA can be used creatively to link education to social action, through addressing the interests and struggles of ordinary people in communities.

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‘Hungry?’: Introducing Keris Heading’s Photography

Art and Photography, Global Justice Academy, Students participate!

Each year, the Global Justice Academy runs a photography competition as part of Edinburgh College of Art’s MA Photography degree programme. The 2018 competition was run in conjunction with the ERC Greyzone Project and its Summer School, ‘Navigating the Grey Zone: Complicity, Resistance, and Solidarity’. This post is the first in a short series of three, where we introduce this year’s winners, their images, and the stories behind their submissions

Series Winner: Keris Heading, ‘Hungry?’.

Q: What inspired your competition entry?

Working in a supermarket, I noticed the vast amounts of food that is wasted and thrown away, which encouraged me to research more about the exact figures of food wastage in large countries like the UK and US. The figures were astonishing. World hunger is a concept many people, or perhaps everyone, is familiar with, but perhaps it is the injustice in the distribution and usage of food that needs more attention.

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‘The Coming Soon Land’: Introducing Amber Brown’s Photography

Art and Photography, Global Justice Academy, Students participate!

Each year, the Global Justice Academy runs a photography competition as part of Edinburgh College of Art’s MA Photography degree programme. The 2018 competition was run in conjunction with the ERC Greyzone Project and its Summer School, ‘Navigating the Grey Zone: Complicity, Resistance, and Solidarity’. This post is the first in a short series of three, where we introduce this year’s winners, their images, and the stories behind their submissions

Single Image Winner: Amber Brown, ‘The Coming Soon Land’.

Q: What inspired your competition entry?

My concept of ‘The Coming Soon Land’ sprouted from the emotional disarray I found in observing a town undergoing change within development. Whilst the project grows from a frustration, the landscapes are in some sort of structural purgatory which I find aesthetically interesting, a grey zone that is not quite one nor the other, plans proposed but stuck in quicksand amidst a crisis concerning social and urban justice. Solidarity in this, comes from an accumulation of observed opinions which have been illustrated through my imagery. It feels a complex situation, one that is constantly progressing.

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‘Bridges Not Walls’: Introducing Isobel Budler’s Photography Series

Art and Photography, Global Justice Academy, Students participate!

Each year, the Global Justice Academy runs a photography competition as part of Edinburgh College of Art’s MA Photography degree programme. The 2018 competition was run in conjunction with the ERC Greyzone Project and its Summer School, ‘Navigating the Grey Zone: Complicity, Resistance, and Solidarity’. This post is the first in a short series of three, where we introduce this year’s winners, their images, and the stories behind their submissions

Commended Series: Isobel Budler, ‘Bridges Not Walls’.

Q: What inspired your competition entry?

I came across the ‘Bridges Not Walls’ conference through the organiser Nancy, who I knew prior to the project. She spoke to me candidly about the work they do within the school they are employed by, challenging stereotypes and educating young people on a range of topics.

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Reflections from the Tenth Aniversary Edition of the Edinburgh Legal Theory Festival: Workshop on Virtue Ethics, Markets, and the Law

Innovative Initiative Fund, Law and Legal, Theory

The Global Justice Academy recently sponsored one of the workshops at the 10th Anniversary Edition of the Edinburgh Legal Theory Festival. In this blog post, the co-convenors of the Edinburgh Legal Theory Research Group—Richard Latta and Joaquín Reyes—report on the issues raised during the workshop.

The workshop on ‘Virtue ethics, Markets, and the Law’—held on Tuesday 5thJune, the second day of the week-long Edinburgh Legal Theory Festival (4th-8thJune)—was devoted, as its name suggests, to explore the implications of a virtue-centred approach to legal theory for a wide-ranging variety of related topics, including the relationships between power, virtue and the constitutional state (Dominic Burbidge), algorithmic governance (René Urueña), the Rule of law and the law of equity (Irit Samet), intent to contract and trust (Prince Saprai), and the future of virtue jurisprudence (Chapin Cimino). All sessions were followed by a lively discussion in which the participants had the opportunity to give and receive important feedback on their ongoing research projects.

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Shaking Hands in Dayton and Singapore: Symbolic Representations of Peace Processes

Balkans, Eastern Europe, Edinburgh, Global Justice Academy, Negotiation, Peace, Peace Processes, USA

In this post, PSRP researcher Laura Wise reflects on symbolic representations of handshake moments at high-level peace summits, and what we miss when we consistently focus on comprehensive peace agreements. This is a longer version of remarks delivered at the IICR 2nd Annual Conference ‘Networked Cultures: Translations, Symbols, and Legacies’, as part of a session convened by the IICR Cultures of Peace and Violence Network. PSRP and the Global Justice Academy are proud members of this interdisciplinary network that enables discussions on how symbolic representations constrain or facilitate cultures of peace and violence, and we look forward to participating in future events. 

Kim and Trump shaking hands on the red carpet during the DPRK-USA Singapore Summit on 12 June 2018

Handshake moments are currently a hot topic, as journalists rush to interpret the symbolism of the Singapore Summit between North Korea and the United States. From the diplomatic menu to the moment the leaders of each country make physical contact, no aspects of negotiation process are above being scrutinized for what they can tell us about the potential for achieving peace. Meanwhile, participants and commentators often hail the agreements themselves as historic and comprehensive even before crucial details of a done deal are released to the public, with parties keen to credit themselves as having achieved what no other figure has managed to do thus far.

Over twenty years ago, another high-level summit was capturing the world’s attention, as leaders from the former Yugoslavia and other interested parties gathered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, to negotiate yet another comprehensive peace plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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The Use of Sport Initiatives to Promote Human Rights in Palestine

Citizenship and Belonging, Human rights, Palestine, Sport

This post, by Asil Said, first appeared on the University of Edinburgh’s Academy of Sport blog, Sport Matters. Academy of Sport Director, Professor Grant Jarvie, is a member of the Global Justice Academy Management Group.

Books and Boxers and the Right to Movement are but two interventions aiming to make a difference to the lives of youth in Palestine. This Academy of Sport-Sport Matters blog provides an evidenced insight into the struggle for sport as a human right within Palestine. 

Sport, Palestine and the International Community

Sport and physical activity has international recognition as a simple, low cost and effective tool for development, and a means of achieving national and international development goals. The United Nations Agenda 2030 has provided sport with a mandate to contribute to social change.

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Legacies of Human Rights Violations: Beyond the Legal Paradigm

Human rights, Innovative Initiative Fund

In this blog, the organisers of this IIF-sponsored film series reflect on the three events and issues raised. The series took place which took place between January and April 2018 at The University of Edinburgh.

The film series ‘Legacies of Human Rights Violations’ addressed the contemporary legacies of human rights violations from an artistic, cinematic perspective. The series involved showing four films: I Am Not Your Negro, My Beautiful Laundrette, REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony, and Kamchatka. The selected films tackled issues as diverse as racial oppression, gender norms and agency and institutionalised state violence. Specifically, the films focused the experiential reality of human rights issues that stands beyond the grasp of the legalist perspective and its disembodied standards of right and wrong. Indeed, our purpose was to shed light on how the structural, deeply entrenched practices of oppression and discrimination affect people’s everyday lives, intimate domestic spheres and interpersonal relationships, while also unearthing the everyday, relational forms of dissent, solidarity and resistance that arise in response. The film screenings ensued in a fruitful dialogue across the fields of political theory, anthropology, law, film and music studies. They were well attended and engaged students, staff and the broader public in a discussion on the ethical potentials and limitations of cinema as a mode of creative learning and democratic education.

The first film, I Am Not Your Negro, perhaps most explicitly exposed the limits of the Western liberal understanding of democracy and the supposed neutrality of its legal institutions, as revealed by the structural nature of racial oppression. In the film, the director Raoul Peck tells the story of James Baldwin, an American novelist and social critic, based on his unfinished manuscript Remember This House. At the forefront stands Baldwin’s conversations and friendships with prominent figures of the American civil rights movement, such as Medgar Evers, Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr, bringing forth an emotional insight into the struggles for racial equality in the US.

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